[jtolster]

How far in advance is it worth looking at any macro economic trends? I think you can automatically discount any article looking 10 years or more out, they have neither the incentive nor the talent to make any reasonable prediction. On top of that, the timeless aspects of the world and human nature aren't news worthy - so anything remotely predictable doesn't get said.

[anthonypasq]

this isnt a macro-economic trend, this is demographics which are extremely easy to predict more than 10 years into the future considering we know how many people are alive today and what age they are

[Teever]

You don't think that variables like climate change, global thermonuclear war, the development of artificial wombs, pharmacutical life extension, stem cell organs etc... are enough monkey wrenches to make predictions like they unreliable?

[netbioserror]

What independent variables are they accounting for? Cultures and attitudes change, birth rates change, legal frameworks change, immigration and emigration trends change, EVERY variable that feeds into the base value of "population count" over time also changes dramatically over time.

[The_Colonel]

The article is mainly about fertility rate which is difficult to predict.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.economist.com/china/2024/03/21/chinas-low-fertil... | https://archive.today/0iRUa

"Consider another figure that should haunt leaders: 1.7. That is the number of children that, on average, Chinese women of child-bearing age call ideal. China’s ideal is one of the world’s lowest, far below the number given in Japan or South Korea. Chinese women born after 1995 want the fewest of all: 48.3% of them told the Chinese General Social Survey of 2021 that they desire one or no children. There is growing evidence that such attitudes are powerfully shaped by how people, and those around them, experienced the one-child policy."

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/324... | https://archive.today/EXI8u

Seems fairly straightforward to predict based on a total fertility rate of 1-1.05 (2022-current) and forwarding looking social/cultural cues. TFR won't get to 0, but based on all available evidence across the world, it isn't going back up either.

[The_Colonel]

> TFR won't get to 0, but based on all available evidence across the world, it isn't going back up either.

It is going back up, it's just very unclear on which timescale. Will it go back to the replacement rate in 20, 50, 100, 1000 years?

Cultures/genes which favor procreation will ... procreate, and become more and more represented. It's possible that in a 1000 years, most of the world will be from orthodox jews / amish / conservative muslims etc. at which point the TFR will be back up.

And this is when we leave it to the nature. China as an autoritarian state has a lot of tools at their disposal. They can make motherhood more desirable.

[Gibbon1]

My take is if women can control how many children to have fertility drops down to replacement rate. If women have to give up autonomy when they have children they'll go lower than that. That's China, Japan, and Korea.

[JumpCrisscross]

> fertility rate which is difficult to predict

Based on what? Are our population models from the 1990s that far off?

[Someone]

Yes and no. https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections:

“Many of the UN’s historical projections – even as far back as the 1960s – have been remarkably close to the truth.”

That’s for the world population on relatively short time frames (20 to 30 years in the future), though.

Things get harder if you take smaller groups of people or look further ahead.

That’s why, if you look at the UN reports, you’ll see a huge spread in predictions for 2100.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve... for example predicts a world population of between (eyeballing the chart) 9 and 12 billion in 2100, and why this article says could and not will.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That’s for the world population on relatively short time frames (20 to 30 years in the future)

That's one generation. Population models are generally pretty good for two, so out to ~2075 from today. World models are easier because you don't have to model immigration.

[11101010001100]

You can certainly ask a model what happens if we keep present rates what will the future look like? Are you suggesting that this sort of question is not relevant?

[acchow]

https://xkcd.com/605/

[jryb]

There's nothing outrageous about predicting that a country with a very low fertility rate will experience population decline over time. The point of these predictions is to consider the consequences of maintaining current policies.

[11101010001100]

Yes, the future is hard to predict. Why bother?